With the film The King's Warden on the verge of surpassing 12 million viewers, the production company quickly drew a line amid plagiarism allegations.
On the 10th, a production company official for the film The King's Warden (director Jang Hang-jun, distributed by SHOWBOX, produced by Onda Works·BA Entertainment) told OSEN "The King's Warden is an original work based on historical facts, and the entire creative process has been thoroughly documented and can be proven," expressing the official position.
This was an active denial of the plagiarism allegations surrounding The King's Warden that surfaced on the 9th. That day, MBN's News7 reported a claim that there is a separate original author of The King's Warden.
According to the report, theater actor a person surnamed Um, who died in 2019, had earlier written a screenplay titled "Eom Heung-do" in 2000. As The King's Warden recently became a phenomenon and gained great popularity, the deceased a person surnamed Um's bereaved family reportedly sent a certified letter to the production company demanding an explanation of the creation process and sources of materials, saying The King's Warden is substantially similar to the late person's screenplay.
However, the production company of The King's Warden said, "Because the work uses historical figures and events as its subject, there may be works that claim similarities, but there is no path of exposure or causal relationship indicating that the work was encountered during the creative process, and there is absolutely no fact of plagiarizing another work during planning, development, and production," adding, "Therefore, the claims of plagiarism are groundless. We will respond firmly through all processes, including legal procedures," announcing a strong legal response policy.
The King's Warden is a film set in Cheongnyeongpo in 1457 that tells the story of a village chief who volunteered for exile to help revive the village and a young deposed king who was exiled from the throne. It has been praised for beautifully portraying the friendship between Danjong (Park Jihoon), the ill-fated Joseon king who was dethroned at a young age and later killed, and Eom Heung-do (Yoo Hai Jin), a Joseon commoner who risked his life to see him off in his final moments.
Recently crowned a "10-million ticket" film, The King's Warden drew 203,027 viewers on Monday the 9th, its sixth week since release, bringing the nationwide cumulative audience to 11,706,746 as of the morning of the 10th on the KOFIC integrated computer network. Thus, the continuous box office momentum of a 10-million film born about two years after The Roundup: Punishment in May 2024 is stirring the film industry.
Amid this, an abrupt plagiarism controversy has erupted. The King's Warden is known to have been adapted and directed by Jang Hang-jun early on based on a separate original script. Attention is focused on whether the production company's swift response can quell the unexpected flare-up and sustain the film's box office momentum. <
[Photo] provided by SHOWBOX
[OSEN]